Day Two Of The Steubenville Rape Trial – ‘Reno Took Care Of It’
Please note that the following may need a trigger warning for those of you who are survivors of sexual assault, abuse, or rape. Thank you.
Day two of the Steubenville rape trial involved a lot of evidence regarding cell phones and other electronic devices and methods of retrieval of these devices by law enforcement. A forensics expert with Ohio’s crime lab, JoAnn Gibb, testified about texts that were involved with the incidents that took places on the evening of August 11th and the early morning hours of August 12th, and the subsequent aftermath when the 16-year-old rape victim attempted to piece together what occurred during the parties. To try and put this all in perspective, the crime lab retrieved 362,972 from 17 different cell phones about the dates in question.
The young victim’s texts mainly focused on her trying to piece together what happened to her the night before. From an August 12th exchange between the victim and her ex-boyfriend:
Ex-boyfriend: Are you alright? (He sent this message numerous times until she replied)
Jane Doe: I’m good I need to find my phone tho and Trent went through my phone and looked at all our sh*t but what happened last night?
Ex-boyfriend: You were like dead. Then they took you to Mark’s. I went there and left when I saw you naked on the ground. I seriously felt so bad for you and I couldn’t do sh*t about it. I’m so sorry.
Jane Doe: WTF? Who was there? Who did that to me?
Ex-boyfriend: The kids who you woke up with and Idk (I don’t know) you’ll have to ask them.
Jane Doe: You couldn’t have told them to stop or anything?
Ex-boyfriend: You don’t think I did? I flipped out on them and they just said they were going to put you to bed and I don’t know what happened after that.
Jane Doe: Thanks. I hate my life. I don’t even know wtf happened.
The following texts took place after the victim discovered there was a photograph of her with semen on her stomach being passed around:
Jane Doe: OMG please tell me this isn’t f***ing true.
Ex-boyfriend: WTF let me find out.
Jane Doe: OMG
Ex-boyfriend: You ok?
Jane Doe: Not at all
Ex-boyfriend: You’ll be all right but I mean did you do anything at all with them? If you remember anything at all you have to tell me. I promise I won’t be mad.
Jane Doe: Swear to God I don’t remember doing anything with them because I didn’t feel good after throwing up. I passed out. I remember Trent telling me to do something but I said no.
Ex-boyfriend: If there’s [semen] on you that’s fucking crazy.
Jane Doe: Please find out.
The Jane Doe in this case also had a text exchange with Trent Mays, who has been accused of rape, in which she told asked him “How could you let this happen to me?”
Texts were read from Mays who fluctuated between bragging about having sex with the victim to making statements like ” Bitches is bitches. Fuck ’em” to outright panic as he asked his friends to lie for him. He even had a text exchange with the father of the victim where he stated:
Sir this is Trent Mays this is all a big misunderstanding. She was at the party and we talked. She was really drunk. I never once tried to do anything forceful with your daughter and I’m sorry for all the trouble this has brought you.
There were so many texts sent regarding this incident, and according to Yahoo.com the phone belonging to May’s had 61,613 messages on it:
“If the police come they are going to look at all my texts, duh,” he wrote to a friend when discussing what he was worried about.
“Delete them,” the friend texted back.
“Like phone records they can pull them up on a computer. LOL.”
“Oh, LOL. Hello cops,” the friend texted.
There were texts asking friends to lie about what happened. Texts where people asked each other to send naked photographs of the victim. Texts where Mays bragged that he had actual intercourse with the victim and texts where he denied it. But one of the most shocking texts involved Mays claiming he had Coach Reno Saccoccia , the beloved Big Red Football coach, “take care of it” for him:
“Nothing really,” Mays texted. “Going to stay in for awhile. LOL. And next time [someone is] into something, suspended for three games.
“But I feel he took care of it for us,” Mays continued. “Like, he was joking about it, so I’m not worried.”
In another text, Mays wrote: “I got Reno. He took care of it and [expletive] ain’t going to happen, even if they did take it to court.”
Coach Reno has yet to comment on these allegations.
The trial will continue throughout today, with Jane Doe rumored to be taking the stand, and may continue until tomorrow. It’s still too early to speculate on the outcome of this case, but reading through the text messages it’s obvious that the victim didn’t give consent and was unable to give consent to the acts which occurred in August. It’s heartbreaking, and she had questions about whether or not she has been drugged and what exactly happened to her. Yes, one can argue that it was her fault for lying to her parent’s about where she would be that night, that she should have known better than to get drunk, that she was “asking for trouble” by going to a party instead of spending the night with her friend, which is what she told her parents she would be doing. And trust me, I have had these arguments lodged at me since I started to cover this case in December. But this is what teens do. They lie, they say they will be one place and instead they go to another, they experiment with alcohol, they sneak out of windows. I did it, I’m sure many of you have done it. That doesn’t excuse rape. No matter how drunk the victim was, she should never have been violated this way, not only in the physical sense, but on social media.
There are no transcripts of all the text messages at this point, but should they become available I will update this article.
(photo:123people.com)
